Monitoring Meteorological Drought in Southern China Using Remote Sensing Data

Severe meteorological drought is generally considered to lead crop damage and loss. In this study, we created a new standard value by averaging the values distributed in middle 30–70% instead of traditional mean value, proposed index calculation method named Normalized Indices (NI) for monitoring after normalized processing. The TRMM-derived precipitation data, GLDAS-derived soil moisture MODIS-derived vegetation condition data from 2003 2019 were used, compared NI with commonly used Condition (CI) Anomalies Percentage (AP). Taking mid-to-lower reaches Yangtze River (MLRYR) as an example, results paddy rice winter wheat showed that (1) can monitor well relative changes real precipitation/soil moisture/vegetation conditions both arid humid regions, while was overestimated CI AP, (2) due NI, well-known event occurred MLRYR August October had much less severe impact on than expected. contrast, deficiency induced increase sunshine adequate heat resources, which improved growth 78.8% area. This study discusses some restrictions AP suggests provides better MLRYR, thus offering approach future studies.